I made up my mind to do some serious digging and write the final and definitive report on this puzzling Australian expression.
I’ve often been asked about it often and I’ve never been able to say with any certainty where it comes from or how it was coined.
Well, I’ve consulted the Australian National Dictionary, Gerry Wilkes’ magnificent dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, the Sidney J. Baker’s masterpiece The Australian Language—and about a dozen other books on my shelves.
And it seems there is no clear and final answer as to where this comes from or how it was coined.
The Australian National Dictionary says ‘stone the crows’ is ‘an exclamation of surprise, disgust, exasperation etc.’
The earliest appearance in print seems to be in 1915—in the Adelaide Register in March of that year (‘The Australian has also contributed his quota of “frills” to the mother tongue… “Stone the crows” he croaked.’)
Clearly by then the expression was part of the spoken language and had been for some time.
When pressed on a radio shows as to how this phrase might have come about, my guess was that managing to hit a crow sitting on a fence with a flung stone would be impossible (the bird would take off long before your missile reached him) so to hit his black feathers—to actually ‘stone the crow’—would be a cause for great surprise.
That was my guess.
And for all I know it may well be the thinking behind this coinage.
But that wouldn’t explain all the variations with the same meaning: ‘starve the crows’, ‘stiffen the lizards’ and all the rest.
So, I suspect we just have to settle for the notion that somehow this collection of words (‘stone the crows’) appealed to early Australian settlers in the bush as a handy way of expressing their feelings.
And that is as definitive as it’s possible to get.
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
The liveliest part of this website is usually the Q and A page -- be sure to check it out from time to time.
